The Top 5 Ways to Maximise All of Your Skills for a Winning CV

When it comes to applying for a job, what should you emphasise: your qualifications or your personal qualities? Your work experience or your life experience? Your technical expertise or your talents elsewhere? A CV’s not just a distillation of your career and qualifications – life experiences are important too.

Here are the five essentials to cover when writing a CV:

1. A passion and interest in the role and employer

There’s no point in sending a bog-standard CV to apply for every job that takes your fancy. Remember the purpose of a CV: to persuade the recruiter (who’s probably read tens, if not hundreds, of other applications) that they want to find out more about you at an interview.

Show you are the most enthusiastic candidate by carefully creating a bespoke CV for each job that is relevant to the role you’re going for. This tells an employer you have researched the role and understand the company’s culture. Remember, time spent on research will pay off if you’re invited for an interview.

2. Relevant skills and experience

Of course, relevant skills really do count. The problem comes when there’s a considerable gap between the job you currently have and the one you want.

Use your ingenuity when writing your CV. Think about the responsibilities of your current role that are also needed in your dream job. Helped your boss on an out-of-the-ordinary project? Write about it, and it’ll show potential employers that you’re willing to go the extra mile and that you have the knack to turn your hand to new things.

3. Transferable skills to make you stand out from the crowd

They are a buzzword of recruitment jargon, but it’s tough to show transferable skills such as communication, teamwork and negotiation on your CV without sounding clichéd.

Think laterally: if you think seasonal or unpaid work is less important than the nine-to-five, you couldn’t be more wrong. Languages, voluntary work abroad or at home, and travel are great ways to show employers you are well rounded and could make an attractive addition to their team. Those non-glamorous experiences helping out at the local hospital could’ve done more than just warm your heart – they will have given you great teamwork skills.

Maybe when looking for seasonal work at a summer camp Switzerland took your fancy? Have you attended French courses in France and picked up great language skills along the way? Write about the brilliant skills you learned from the people you met.

4. Getting to the point

Once you’ve thought about the experiences to include, how you describe them is key:

Do:

⇒ Use plain English: be concise and keep to 2 sides of A4.

⇒ Use bullet points: a list is easier on the eye for a weary recruiter.

⇒ Sound positive: emphasise your strengths and use those examples.

Don’t:

⇒ Make anything up: pick out the elements of your experience that make you right for the job. Don’t add anything you haven’t really done because your cover will soon be blown!

⇒ Repeat yourself: refer to examples once to conserve precious space.

⇒ List irrelevant qualifications: so you won the class Chemistry prize when you were 11? What have you done since?

5. Immaculate presentation and attention to detail

Great presentation is not just a matter of picking out the correct shoes for the interview. Proofread the CV to check it looks good and is free from mistakes. Could you ask a friend to have a second look?

Follow these tips, and put time and care into preparing and developing your CV, and the employers will come running. Good luck? You won’t need it with your sparkling new CV!